This
paper explores the attributional characteristics of the reasons that nascent
entrepreneurs offer for their work and career choices and compares them
to a group of non-entrepreneurs. Four separate factors accounted for 57.2%
of the variance: Innovation Achievement (internal/variable), Financial
Success (external/variable), Personal Growth (internal/stable) and Public
Recognition (external/variable). These factors were differentially important:
all respondents (entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs) rated financial success
and personal growth higher than innovation achievement and public recognition.
Sex differences in motivations also emerged, with females (both entrepreneurs
and non-entrepreneurs) rating personal growth higher than did males, who,
in turn rated financial success higher than did females. Finally, nascent
entrepreneurs rated reasons concerning public recognition lower than non-entrepreneurs
in making their career choices.

INTRODUCTION

Why
do some individuals decide to start companies rather than pursue other
kinds of career opportunities?

Research
and
theory on what factors influence whether individuals choose entrepreneurial
activity has a long history of specifying various personal characteristics,
motivations, cognitions, and social conditions (Aldrich, 1999; Gartner,
1988, 1989; Gartner, Bird & Starr, 1992; Katz, 1992; Kolvereid, 1996a,
1996b; Shaver & Scott, 1991; Simon, Houghton & Aquino, 2000). This
article focuses on the cognitive orientation of individuals considering
entrepreneurship. A significant concern about the validity of research
on the motivations and cognitions of entrepreneurs has hinged on the problem
of interviewing entrepreneurs long after they are already in business (Gartner,
1989; Shaver & Scott, 1991). To address this concern we examined the
reasons that individuals offer for choosing independent business startup
while they are in the initial stages of starting a business. These nascent
entrepreneurs offer prospective accounts for their choice of entrepreneurship,
rather than retrospective reminiscences. In addition, our research compares
these nascent entrepreneurs with a representative comparison sample of
individuals who are not actively engaged in independent business creation.

LITERATURE
REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES

As
outlined in Kolvereid (1996a), the reasons that potential entrepreneurs
offer for getting into business should have a significant influence on
whether they actually engage in entrepreneurial activity. Using the logic
of Ajzen (1991), as subsequently developed by Krueger and his colleagues
(Krueger & Carsrud, 1993; Krueger & Brazeal, 1994), Kolvereid (1996a)
posits that the intentions of individuals to choose a career (self-employment
versus organizational employment) should likely influence their subsequent
behaviors. Reasons for getting into business (or not), therefore, matter,
because reasons are traditionally considered to be the basis of intentions
(Anscombe, 1956).

The
theoretical lens used to explore the reasons that potential entrepreneurs
offer for deciding to pursue independent business startup is attribution
theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley, 1972; 1973; Weiner, 1985). Attribution theory
attempts to offer a scientific account of the way in which people explain
their own actions and the actions of others (Shaver, 1985). When the event
to be explained is the successful performance of a task, Heider (1958)
argued that people observing the event would concentrate on four primary
explanatory factors: the individual’s ability and effort, as well as the
difficulty of the task and the presence of luck. As noted by Weiner (1985),
these four explanations can be arrayed in a fourfold table in which the
dimensions are the locus of causality (internal versus external) and the
stability of the causes (stable versus variable). In Heider’s terms, a
person “can” perform a task successfully if the person’s ability exceeds
the task difficulty. Whether the person will perform the task successfully
also depends on exertion of the requisite effort, or perhaps on the presence
of good luck (or the absence of bad luck). In addition, attribution theory
takes into account the degree to which the actor intended to produce an
outcome and whether the actor has control over the circumstance enough
to make the outcome happen (Weiner, 1985).

New
businesses are not created by accident. There is enough in the way of the
process involved in business startup to suggest that these actions are
clearly intentional. In fact, Gatewood, Shaver & Gartner (1995) found
29 separate activities that need to be undertaken in the creation of a
business venture. When obstacles arise in connection with any of these
activities, entrepreneurs must find ways to overcome them in order to ensure
what Heider (1958) called “equifinality” of the outcome. Therefore, in
theoretical terms, new venture creation is an intentional act that involves
repeated attempts to exercise control over the process, in order to achieve
the desired outcome.

A number
of studies have been attempted to explore the kinds of reasons that entrepreneurs
offer for explaining their intentions for self-employment. In a report
on an 11 country study of 1,402 individuals who had previously started
businesses, Scheinberg and MacMillan (1988) found six broad factors (based
on a factor analysis of 38 items) of reasons for business creation: need
for approval, perceived instrumentality of wealth, communitarianism, need
for personal development, need for independence, and need for escape. In
comparing entrepreneurs by country, they found that the reasons for business
creation varied. For example, U.S. and Australian entrepreneurs scored
highest on the “need for independence” factor, whereas entrepreneurs from
Italy, Portugal, and China scored highest on “communitarianism.” Scandinavian
countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark had entrepreneurs who offered
low scores on the instrumentality of wealth factor. In a follow-up study,
(Shane, Kolvereid, & Westhead, 1991) in a factor analysis of 23 items
from a survey of 597 owner-managers in Great Britain, New Zealand and Norway,
identified four broad factors that explained an entrepreneur’s reasons
for business creation: recognition, independence, learning, and roles.
They identified a number of nationality and gender differences, and no
overall main effect for any specific item. Based on these two previous
explorations, Birley and Westhead (1994) developed a questionnaire of 23
reasons for starting businesses that was administered to 405 owner-managers
of independent businesses in the United Kingdom. They found that the top
six reasons for getting into business were: to have freedom in work, take
advantage of an opportunity, control one’s own time, “it made sense at
that time in my life,” provide security for one’s family, and have greater
flexibility for personal life. A factor analysis of the 23 reasons produced
seven factors that the authors labeled: need for approval, need for independence,
need for personal development, welfare (in the contributing to the community
sense) considerations, perceived instrumentality of wealth, tax reduction,
and following role models. Each of these large studies involved surveys
of individuals who had previously started firms.

Kolvereid
(1996a), in a study of the reasons given for self-employment versus organizational
employment for a group of 372 Norwegian business school graduates, designed
a classification scheme that posits 11 types of reasons for choosing between
self-employment versus organizational employment: security, economic opportunity,
authority, autonomy, social environment, work load, challenge, self-realization,
participate in the whole process, avoid responsibility, and career. He
found that individuals who were self-employed were more likely to choose
economic opportunity, authority, autonomy, challenge, self-realization,
and participate in the whole process, compared to those choosing organizational
employment. Like the three preceding studies, this research reached people
years after their occupational choices had already been made.

In
one of the few prospective studies of entrepreneurs conducted (Gatewood,
et al., 1995), 142 pre-venture clients of a small business development
center (SBDC), were asked (as an open-ended question) why they wanted to
start a business. Most respondents provided no more than two distinct answers
to the question. Although there were obviously differences in individual
wording, six kinds of answer accounted for 93% of the first two reasons
offered. In order of appearance, these were: identification of a market
need (29% of the total), autonomy and independence (an additional 18%),
a desire to make more money (18%), a desire to use knowledge and experience
(16%), the enjoyment of self-employment (7%), and a desire to show that
it could be done (5%).

From
an attributional coding of the reasons for getting into business offered
in these previous studies of entrepreneurs (Birley & Westhead, 1994;
Gatewood, et al., 1995; Kolvereid, 1996a; Scheinberg & MacMillan, 1988;
Shane et al., 1991), the four attributional categories (internal/external
+ variable/stable) can be identified. Need for independence, for example,
is an internal/stable attribution. This reason is internal because it involves
an individual’s personal ability to run a business. Independence is a stable
attribution because this reason is not likely to change for an individual
in the short-term. Need for achievement, is an internal/variable attribution.
Achievement is a personal goal (internal) that depends on the effort of
the individual. Effort is variable. Financial security, for example, is
an external/variable attribution. Although financial security in entrepreneurship
will be affected by the individual’s personal attributes, such as effort
and ability, these rewards are ultimately determined by external forces.
While an individual can control how much effort is undertaken, one cannot
control how much of a financial gain will result from this effort. Customers
have much of this control because they make the final decision about purchasing
from a business. Because an entrepreneur does not have complete control
over how well the business will do, financial security is an external attribution.
Financial security is variable because it is not stable in the short-run.
An expanding industry is external stable. Broad changes in an entire industry
are clearly outside the individual, but in at least the medium-term those
changes are relatively stable.

Are
the reasons (and attributions) offered by potential entrepreneurs for getting
into business significantly different from the reasons (and attributions)
offered by a similar comparison group of individuals considering other
career choices? Such reasons as: to lead, to achieve something, to earn
income, to grow and learn, to challenge oneself, to be respected, to attain
a higher position for oneself, would likely be the kinds of reasons that
any one might offer for choosing any kind of job. In this way, the differences
among entrepreneurs may be as great as the differences among non-entrepreneurs
(Gartner, 1988). Despite the possible similarities in overall sets of motivations
for career choice, past research suggests that the relative
importance of particular reasons might differ. Specifically, for example,
Kolvereid’s (1996a) work would lead us to expect that:

Hypothesis
1: Explanations having to do with economic potential and personal autonomy
will be more important to nascent entrepreneurs than to non-entrepreneurs.

In
their study of prospective entrepreneurs, Gatewood, et al. (1995) found
that women who actually started businesses had, a year earlier, given primarily
internal explanations for their choice to start. By contrast, men who actually
started businesses had, a year earlier, given primarily external explanations
for their choice to enter business. On this basis we would also expect
that:

The
data for this research were obtained from the ERC’s National Panel Study
of Business Start-Ups. Detailed descriptions of the methods and sampling
can be found in Reynolds (in press). The data involve three different samples
of individuals, all of whom were initially identified through a random
digit dialing (RDD) telephone survey procedure conducted in two phases.
In the first phase, households were called by the Market Facts corporation
in their TeleNation surveys, which involve a minimum of 1,000 interviews
(500 female, 500 male) completed with adults 18 years of age or older over
a three-day period. Up to three attempts were made on each selected telephone
number. In the second phase of the research, respondents who met the inclusion
criteria were called by the University of Wisconsin Survey Research Laboratory
(UWSRL) and were interviewed extensively by telephone. At the conclusion
of these telephone interviews, participants were sent a detailed mail questionnaire.

The
initial sample for RDD calls was a total of 31,261 individuals (15,662
females and 15,599 males). Two questions in the telephone screening were
designed to identify people who might be starting businesses (either as
autonomous start-ups or as something being done in cooperation with a current
employer). A respondent could answer “no” or “yes” to either question,
thereby placing him- or herself into one of four categories (no start-up
activity, start-up activity in conjunction with an employer, autonomous
start-up activity, or both kinds of start-up activity). For purposes of
this research, only individuals falling into the autonomous start-up category
are considered eligible for the designation “nascent entrepreneur.”

Two
additional questions asked in the telephone screening were used to separate
those people actively involved in autonomous start-up from those who were
perhaps thinking about it, but not actively involved. These questions inquired
as to whether (a) the respondent anticipated becoming an “owner” (in whole
or in part) of the business being developed, and (b) there had been any
ongoing business organizing activity during the immediately preceding 12
months. In the ERC study as a whole, affirmative answers to both questions
were necessary for individuals to be considered “nascent entrepreneurs,”
and we have adopted this convention. The result is a total of 1,494 nascent
entrepreneurs (561 females, 933 males) eligible for the longer telephone
interviews to be conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Research
Laboratory. One of the early questions in this telephone interview asked
whether the business being organized had achieved sufficient cash flow
for three months to pay expenses and the owner-manager’s salary. If the
answer was affirmative, as it was for some 27% of the people contacted
(Reynolds, in press) then the activity was considered an “infant business”
no longer in the organization stage and the respondent was dropped from
the overall telephone interview sample.

At
this point, however, the financial realities of the overall project came
into play. The original ERC data collection was financed by a consortium
of (mostly academic) institutions, the total of whose contributions was
somewhat over $600,000. Additional financial support was later obtained
from the National Science Foundation (NSF) but these funds were earmarked
for specific purposes (telephone oversampling of women and minorities).
(Note: As the funds for oversampling of minorities arrived well into the
research process, the only oversampling included in the present data set
was the oversampling for women.) The 1,494 eligible nascent entrepreneurs
(NEs) noted above consequently fell into the four categories formed by
the intersection of respondent gender with source of support (ERC or NSF).
The ERC funds were used to collect information from both female and male
respondents, whereas the NSF funds were used to collect telephone information
only
from
females. Interviews were completed with 161 ERC females (42.59% of the
original group of eligible NE females), 247 ERC males (40.29% of the originally
eligible NE males), 162 NSF females (47.09% of the originally eligible
NE females), but none of the 550 NE originally eligible NSF males. The
three groups completing the telephone interview were further reduced by
our requirement that respondent gender as recorded by the UWSRL be identical
to respondent gender as recorded by Market Facts (on the reasonable assumption
that if the genders were discrepant it was likely that two different people
provided the screening information and telephone interview responses).
Thus for our purposes, the three groups of telephone interview responses
consisted of 150 (ERC female), 245 (ERC male), and 149 (NSF female) “pure”
nascent entrepreneurs.

At
the end of the telephone interview, respondents were asked to volunteer
their first names, then their addresses, so that they could be sent their
$25 payment for taking part in the telephone interview, and the mail questionnaire.
Again, even at this point, not all respondents agreed (despite the offer
of a payment of an additional $25 for completion of the mail survey). And
not all those who agreed to receive the mail questionnaire actually returned
it. The mail sample for the present research thus consisted of “pure” nascent
entrepreneurs whose Market Facts and UWSRL gender codes matched, and who
returned a completed questionnaire. The category sizes were as follows:
122 ERC females (or 32.28% of the originally eligible ERC female-founder
category), 166 ERC males (27.08% of the originally eligible ERC male-founder
category), and 99 NSF females (or 28.78% of the originally eligible NSF
female-founder category).

The
comparison group included in the present research was the ERC comparison
group of 91 females and 85 males (the total was 78.92% of the 223 people
in the comparison group who completed a shorter version of the telephone
interview.

Use
of Weights

According
to Reynolds (in press), the TeleNation data set comes with “post-stratification
weights for each respondent based on estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s
Current Population Survey. The post-stratification scheme is based on gender,
age, household income, and the four National Census Regions [Northeast,
South, Midwest, and West]. The scheme produces a total of 144 cells for
weighting adjustments” (p. 19). The weights are essential for drawing conclusions
intended to generalize to the entire U.S. population. Reynolds also argues
that “any analysis should be completed with a weighted sample. . . . This
is a reflection of the number of procedures employed in the sampling and
data collection that increased the yield and efficiency of the procedures”
(p. 22).

Although
we agree with this conclusion where generalization to the U.S. population
is concerned, there are reasons to wonder whether it applies to the between-groups
comparisons reported in this paper. First, the actual weights used in the
ERC dataset were significantly modified from the original TeleNation weights.
Specifically, because 144 weighting categories was too many for the size
of the sample, this number was reduced to 32 (the factorial combination
of 2 levels of respondent sex, 4 Census regions, 2 levels of household
income, and 2 levels of respondent age). Second, the final weights were
computed separately for the comparison group and for females and males
within the entrepreneur groups. This was done to take into account the
fact that the selection probabilities within the entrepreneur groups were
different for females and males (because of the NSF-male empty interview
cell). Following the same logic, however, it could be argued that yet a
third weight ought to be applied to the data to take into account the fact
that the number of individuals in the comparison group was at most, approximately
half of the number of individuals in the entrepreneur groups. Third, the
ERC weights were constructed on the basis of the total numbers of
entrepreneur-respondents at each stage of the process. But as noted above,
for purposes of psychological comparisons, we believe it critically important
to restrict the entrepreneur sample to those “pure” entrepreneurs who are
engaging in autonomous start-ups independent of their current employers.
This means that if we were to use weights at all, the existing ERC weights
would have to be modified still further to reflect the fact that the pure
nascent entrepreneurs comprise fewer than 100% of the sample size used
to create weights at each stage of the process (77% of the screened eligible
respondents, 81% of the phone interview respondents, and 81% of the mail
questionnaire respondents). For all of these reasons, we have elected to
report only our analyses conducted on unweighted scores.

Questions
Used

Eighteen
items from the mail survey of the National Panel Study of U.S. Business
Start-up database (items G1A-R) were selected for coding and analysis.
The eighteen items are listed in Table 1.
Thirteen of these items match questions from a list of 23 items that were
identical in the questionnaires used in Shane, et al., (1991: 445) and
Birley and Westhead (1994: 19). Five additional items were added that capture
distinctions made by Kolvereid (1996a): power to influence an organization,
to lead and motivate others, build great wealth/high income, build business
children can inherit, to fulfill a personal vision. The eighteen items
were asked in the following manner. For the nascent entrepreneurs, the
items were preceded by this question: “To what extent are the following
reasons important to you in establishing this new business?” For the comparison
group, the items were preceded by this question: “To what extent are the
following important to you in your decisions about your work and career
choices?” Both groups responded to each item on a 1 to 5 scale: 1—to no
extent, 2—little extent, 3—some extent, 4—great extent, 5—to a very great
extent.

Corrections
for Missing Item Responses

The
total number of respondents for the 18 questions varied by question, from
a low of 380 (out of the 387 respondents) for the item having to do with
“building a business my children can inherit,” to a high of 386 for the
item having to do with “achieving something and getting recognition.” Listwise
deletion of items would have left a remaining sample of 365 people. We
conducted factor analyses to identify the underlying structure of the items,
and the procedure we used (SPSS-PC, V. 9) permits either listwise deletion
or pairwise deletion of missing values. We performed the factor analyses
using both methods, with virtually identical results. Consequently, the
factor analysis reported below is based on pairwise deletion of missing
values, in order to retain as many respondents as possible for each comparison.

ANALYSIS
AND RESULTS

The
18 items were first coded into the four attributional categories created
by the conjunction of the internal/external and stable/variable dimensions.
Next, all 18 items were factor analyzed, using a principal components extraction
with a varimax rotation, to examine item consistency empirically. The results
of this factor analysis are presented in Table
1. The analysis revealed four separate factors that accounted for
57.24% of the variance. The first factor contained items having generally
to do with being in the forefront of one’s business, a factor we call “Innovation
Achievement.” The second factor contained items related to financial performance,
a factor we call “Financial Success.” The third factor contained items
having to do with individual expression and development, a factor we call
“Personal Growth.” Finally, the fourth factor contained items related to
one’s standing in the larger community, a factor we call “Public Recognition.”

We
used a two-stage procedure for deciding whether to retain items. Initially,
items with primary factor loadings more extreme than
±.40 and cross-loadings on secondary
factors that were less extreme than ±.40
were candidates for retention. This initial decision was then confirmed
through reliability analysis, with the final decision on retention based
on the changes in Cronbach a values for the scales (with target items either
included or excluded). By the size-of-loading criteria, four items would
have been deleted from the third factor (personal growth). This would have
created a scale that consisted of only one item, and our preference was
to retain more, rather than fewer, items. Fortunately, the Cronbach a criterion
allowed us to retain these four items, as eliminating them would have reduced
the overall value of alpha. The same Cronbach a criterion did lead us to
eliminate one item, the “financial success” (factor 2) question having
to do with building a business that one’s children could inherit. Overall,
then, we retained 17 of the 18 items.

The
retained items for each factor were averaged, creating four scale scores.
Then we subjected the factor scores to an analysis of variance with independent
variables of respondent group (Nascent vs. Comparison), respondent sex
(Female vs. Male), and scale (Innovation Achievement, Financial Success,
Personal Growth, and Public Recognition). The resulting 2 x 2 x 4 design
had repeated measures on the last factor. The same design was subsequently
performed as two analyses of covariance, with respondent age as a covariate
in one of these and respondent educational attainment as a covariate in
the other, but in both instances the pattern of results was unchanged.
Consequently, only the results from the analysis of variance will be described
here. Mean scores and standard deviations for the four scale scores are
shown in Table 2, classified by the independent
variables.

This
analysis showed an expected main effect for scale, F (3, 1605) =
581.90, p < .0001. For all participants, regardless of respondent
group or sex, Financial Success and Personal Growth were more important
motivating factors than were Innovation Achievement and Public Recognition.
The analysis also revealed a quite surprising main effect for respondent
group, with scores among the nascent entrepreneurs being generally lower
than the scores among people in the comparison group, F (1, 535)
= 27.60, p < .001. This difference between nascent entrepreneurs
and people in the comparison group was especially pronounced on the scale
for Public Recognition, with the interaction between respondent group and
scale being significant, F (3, 1605) = 48.39, p < .0001.

The
results showed was no overall difference based on respondent sex, but there
was an interaction between respondent sex and scale: the mean scores for
females and males were essentially identical on Innovation Achievement
(means, respectively, were 2.87 for females, 2.91 for males) and Public
Recognition (females 2.38, males 2.39); scores for females were slightly
higher than those for males on Personal Growth (4.21 vs. 4.09), but lower
on Financial Success (3.76, 3.96), F (3, 1605) = 3.97, p
< .01. It may be worth noting, however, that the eta-squared value for
this interaction was less than .01, whereas the eta-squared value for the
main effect for scale was .52.

DISCUSSION
AND CONCLUSIONS

The
primary finding of this study was that entrepreneurs are, overall, similar
to non-entrepreneurs in the kinds of reasons they offer for choosing independent
business startup as a career. Both entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs
rated Financial Success and Personal Growth factors as more important than
the Innovation Achievement and Public Recognition Factors. In fact, as
measured by a composite of the four factor scores, non-entrepreneurs scored
higher than nascent entrepreneurs. This overall result certainly argues
against considering entrepreneurs to be qualitatively different from individuals
who pursue other career options. In reasons for career choice, as in what
has been called “personality,” entrepreneurs do not seem to fit the stereotype
held about them in the popular wisdom (Shaver, 1995).

The
one difference in motivations that was found between nascent entrepreneurs
and non-entrepreneurs was on the factor that both nascent entrepreneurs
and non-entrepreneurs ranked lower than the other factors: public recognition.
Nascent entrepreneurs ranked public recognition lower when considering
choice of employment than the non-entrepreneurs. On the basis of this finding,
the title of the paper was derived: Doing it for themselves. Nascent entrepreneurs
offer reasons for getting into business that are less likely to account
for the beliefs and values of others: the respect of friends, family traditions,
the examples of others.

There
were differences in reasons for career choice by gender. Males (entrepreneurs
and non-entrepreneurs) were more likely to rank Financial Success higher
than females (entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs) as a reason for choosing
a career. Females were more likely to rank Personal Growth higher than
males as a reason for choosing a career. This finding supports previous
research by Gatewood, et al., (1995).

As
a way to succinctly summarize the findings about the reasons for career
choice: Nascent entrepreneurs are more similar to non-entrepreneurs, than
they are different. Though, nascent entrepreneurs are less likely to consider
the views of others. Males are different than females. Males are more likely
to seek financial success, whereas females are more likely to seek personal
growth.

If
one agrees with the generalizability of this sample of nascent entrepreneurs
and the comparison group, these findings may offer a definitive answer
to questions about motivational differences between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.
Overall, it would appear that nascent entrepreneurs offer reasons for starting
businesses that are similar to the reasons offered by non-entrepreneurs
for choosing jobs: financial success and personal growth. Business startup
or “a job in an organization” are both pathways to meeting the same goals.

The
factors that were generated from the 18 items show some consistency to
factors generated from previous analyses of business startup reasons (Birley
& Westhead, 1994; Kolvereid, 1996a; Shane, et al, 1991; Scheinberg
& MacMillan, 1988). All four of these previous studies generated factors
that had items that were similar to the three of the factors we generated:
Innovation Achievement, Personal Growth, and Public Recognition. Only in
Shane, et al. (1991) was the Financial Success factor not identified. The
other three studies found a Financial Success factor. Given that the 18
items used in this study did not completely correspond to the 23 items
used by Birley and Westhead (1994) and Shane, et al., (1991) or the 33
items used in Kolvereid (1996a), or the 21 motivational items used in Scheinberg
& MacMillan (1988), it might be viewed as some triumph that there does
seem to be some consistency in the kinds of factors that are generated
from these business startup reasons. In should also be noted that the selection
of individuals to study appears to play a significant role in generating
factors. For example, although Birley and Westhead (1994) and Shane et
al. (1991) used the same items for analysis, their factor results were
different. Shane et al. (1991) did not find a consistent factor for entrepreneurs
in their three country study on the financial success items.

A limitation
of these factors as representations of the overall pattern of reasons for
choosing careers (self-employment or organizational employment) is the
lack of a comprehensive use of items from all the previous studies. It
is unfortunate that this study did not have available items in the U.S.
Panel Study of Business Startups that were used in previous studies of
business startup reasons. Items from such factors as communitarianism and
welfare, tax reduction, and security were missing from this study. Such
factors might have surfaced if these items had been included. Nevertheless,
the similarities among all of these studies of startup reasons would suggest
that the four factors identified in the present research have some convergent
validity.

One
issue that should not be underestimated in this study is the fact that
this research is based on interviews of a representative sample of individuals
in the process of starting a business. The reasons offered for getting
into business are prospective, rather than retrospective. These nascent
entrepreneurs are offering their motivations for getting into business
before the success (or failure) or their efforts are determined. Because
these findings are based on prospective reasons, rather than retrospective
reasons, we believe the results of this study should take precedence over
any previous studies where retrospective reasons for startup have been
offered. In short, the stereotype of the highly independent, financially-driven,
risk-seeking entrepreneur may be nothing more than a distillation of the
retrospective stories that entrepreneurs have told researchers in the past.
In addition, this study systematically compares nascent entrepreneurs to
a representative sample of non-entrepreneurs, a comparison that no other
study, heretofore, has accomplished. So, the finding that entrepreneurs
are very similar to non-entrepreneurs in their reasons for career choice,
should be give pause to researchers attempted for find differences in motivations
between entrepreneurs and others.